The tactile sensation of reaching for the void, for the starry sky, still lingered in Yun Mengxi's palm.
Her performance was utterly finished.
From the moment she leaped from the rooftop, she was no longer the idol who had to be accountable to everyone's gaze, nor the "hope" needed to guide the masses, and not even the "key" that must end the loop.
She was simply an actor who had taken off all her costumes, lying behind the scenes where no one could see, quietly catching her breath.
As her limbs relaxed, something deeper began to churn.
Memories that had been repeatedly washed, worn, and forgotten in countless reincarnations were slowly surfacing from the deepest parts of her consciousness like the wreckage of a sunken ship. Each piece carried the rusty pain of corrosion and a blurry halo.
She looked at her stubbornly raised hand—it was this hand that had waved on stage, had clenched tightly in front of her brother, and had... for the first time, "rejected" reality amidst the despairing ruins.
She remembered.
Not everything, but enough.
She wasn't some accidentally born Herrscher.
She was a little girl born in the ashes of the apocalypse, yet crazily clinging to the lingering warmth of a prosperous era.
In the true "main world," Sapphire City had fallen long ago. Her brother Yun Feng had died in the zombie tide at the Pearl of Sapphire, and she herself had awakened her authority in despair.
It wasn't "time," but something closer to "paranoid adherence to and infinite extension of a predetermined beautiful reality."
It was an attachment to "the past."
When the iron hooves of the Honkai crushed everything she cherished, when the breaths of her brother, Shicheng-ge, and Zhuohua-jie were cut off in the tide of corpses, when the "tomorrow" of the entire world became hideous and terrifying—
She refused.
She used all the power of a newborn Herrscher, even overdrafting something more fundamental, to tear off a small piece of "the past" that had not yet been "anchored" from that cruel "main trunk" world.
It was the night before the Honkai descended, the moment when the lights of Sapphire City were most brilliant, her brother's dream was most vivid, and her life still held infinite possibilities.
She fabricated this instant into this constantly looping "branched world."
Why?
Because she was unwilling to accept it.
Why must beautiful things be shattered?
Why must cherished people die?
Why can't the story stay eternally at its climax, at its most perfect moment?
Like a willful child, she clutched her favorite picture book tightly, refusing to turn to the next page, which she knew was painted with tragedy.
She greedily wanted that "past" to continue forever, wanted her brother to live forever on the road of chasing his dream, wanted this city to stay forever on the eve of the celebration.
This greed was not noble in the slightest; it could even be called selfish—she used the false loop of an entire "world" to build a mausoleum for the "yesterday" she was burying herself with, intending to live inside it forever.
However, she trapped herself.
To maintain this "branched world" centered on her and fueled by her obsession, she had to integrate deeply into it, becoming a part of the loop.
The price was losing the ability to retain clear memories in the reincarnations, leaving only some vague intuition, repetitive déjà vu, and a paranoid desire for a "happy ending."
She was the "god" of this world, but a god with severe amnesia who could only rely on instinct to maintain the cradle.
In contrast, there was the Herrscher of Evolution.
He was not part of the original settings of this world; he was an unexpected intruder.
And his instincts for adaptation and evolution as a Herrscher manifested with astonishing speed in this "branch" with its fragile time structure.
He was learning, observing, and gradually figuring out the "false" nature of this world through repeated collapses and resets.
Yun Mengxi could faintly sense it—if the loop continued, the Herrscher of Evolution, who would eventually fully adapt to the laws of reincarnation, would very likely destroy this "false cage" in his eyes with his own hands in pursuit of "true evolution."
She had no power to stop him; her authority was entirely used for "maintenance."
But she still had a last bit of room for "willfulness," a last shred of greed for "a better possibility."
So, using her weak authority as the holder of the "world branch," she sent out a vague "distress" signal, or rather, an "invitation," into the endless void.
From that solid and cruel "main trunk world," she pulled in variables—Himeko, Fu Hua, Natasha... these "outsiders" who did not belong to her fragile bonsai and had truly weathered storms.
Because they came from the "main trunk," they were not restricted by the rule of memory loss in her world's loop.
They could remember, they could plan, they could bring new possibilities that she, the "local god," could not create.
Like a little director hiding behind the curtain, she watched anxiously and expectantly as these powerful "foreign aids" broke into her elaborately built but peril-ridden stage play.
She hoped they could rewrite the "script" she knew was destined for destruction, to truly fight for a better tomorrow for this frozen "beautiful moment."
And now...
"They did it."
Yun Mengxi murmured, gazing at the night sky above her palm, which her fingers had just half-covered.
Although her memories were still fragmented, the taut "string of obsession" that had run through the entire reincarnation was slowly relaxing.
She could feel that the gravitational pull of some destined "bad ending" was being shifted.
Tomorrow...
The word stirred subtle ripples in her heart.
In her original design, there was no true "tomorrow" in this world, only the endlessly repeating "tonight."
But at this moment, she actually found herself faintly looking forward to this "now," which they had struggled to twist, smoothly transitioning into a different, unknown "next moment."
And she firmly believed that "next moment" would be better.
Just as the thought of "tomorrow" surfaced, the ascending "Cicada Molt" rocket pierced through the patch of night sky her palm had once blocked.
Like a silver shuttle breaking free from its bonds, it dragged a fading blue flame, piercing resolutely into deep space.
Yun Mengxi dropped her hand completely, no longer trying to block or grasp anything.
She just gazed intently, gratified, and with a trace of childish unwillingness, at that "reverse-flying meteor."
Deep in Yun Mengxi's pupils, what was reflected was not just that point of light.
She seemed to see countless overlapping images.
Primitive humans looking up at the starry sky with fear and awe for the first time, carving the tracks of stars on rock walls.
Qu Yuan issuing his Heavenly Questions, casting humanity's confusion toward the ancient universe.
Wan Hu sitting on a chair strapped with rockets, rushing toward the sky with a tragic dream, turning into a blast.
Gagarin looking down at the blue planet from Vostok 1, saying "The Earth is blue."
Armstrong's left foot stepping onto the lunar dust, leaving behind "one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."
Voyager 1 carrying the Golden Record, sailing into the boundless darkness outside the solar system, looking back at Earth as a "pale blue dot."
From looking up, to longing, to attempting, to falling, and then to succeeding... the history of human spaceflight is an epic written in flesh and blood, wisdom, courage, and failure.
And right now, above her city, on this "false" branch imprisoned by a loop, a miniature epic of survival and transcendence... was right here.
Then, her vision began to undergo a strange change.
As if with the return of memory fragments, her underlying connection with this "branched world" was also repairing.
No longer just through the naked eye, her perception spread silently like spilling mercury—
She "saw" the edge of the city, black cracks blooming in the air, hideous Honkai Beasts descending with roars like a swarm of locusts from the abyss.
However, what greeted them was not a panic-stricken crowd, but the Shenzhou regular army, already deployed and rapidly switched from "Arahato pursuit mode."
The light of artillery fire instantly lit up the night sky, tearing the first batch of descending monsters to shreds.
Shock at the series of "accidents" tonight still lingered on the soldiers' faces, but the instinct for battle overrode everything.
She "saw" Fu Hua and the Seven Swords of Taixuan, like several meteors, actively intercepting the most terrifying Honkai Emperor descending there.
Sword qi crisscrossed, fist winds surged. It was a silent and efficient battle to block the deadliest threats outside the circle of the celebrating crowd.
In cruel contrast to this were the people inside the city's safety zone who knew nothing about it.
They were still talking excitedly, holding up their phones to film the rocket's lingering trail, strolling on the streets, enjoying this "stolen" freedom.
Laughter and neon lights formed a night scene of a prosperous age.
Bloody battles and peaceful revelry, separated by only a few kilometers, yet seemingly two parallel worlds.
Yun Mengxi's perspective went higher and higher, colder and colder.
Like an audience member sitting in the last row of a cinema, quietly watching this grand play for which she provided the stage and others performed with all their might.
This illusory branch she created was stumbling but unwaveringly moving toward a "future" she had never written, driven by these "foreign variables."
She knew that due to the limitations of her authority and the "false" nature of the world, this branch could not truly exist for long, nor could it possess a solid, infinite "tomorrow."
Himeko and the others' world, that cruel and real "main trunk," was their true home.
"But... I am already very satisfied with this ending." She confirmed in her heart again.
The actors were excellent, the script was rewritten to its most beautiful moment, and the audience received the solace they wanted.
It was time to bring down the final curtain and send the guest "starring actors" safely back to their original world.
She closed her eyes, preparing to feel the lingering warmth of this noisy and fragile "dream" she created one last time before using her final authority to "eject" Himeko and the others back to the main trunk world.
Just then—
Tap.
A very light sound, like a water droplet hitting glass, rang out at the edge of her conscious perception.
Above the buffer net, at the edge of the rooftop she had jumped from, the air rippled like water hit by a stone.
Two figures emerged in a strange state.
Chen Tianwu and Ana Schariac.
They stood there, yet seemed not to be there.
Their figures flickered slightly, blurry halos radiating from their edges, like holographic projections with bad signal, or quantum ghosts existing in two superimposed states simultaneously.
Their gazes penetrated the distance of space, landing precisely on Yun Mengxi, who lay on the buffer net below with her eyes closed, as if asleep.